The Gnostics and Their Remains

by Charles William King

[1887]

In the mid-19th century, eighty years before the chance discovery
of a treasure trove of Gnostic manuscripts in a dump in Egypt,
C.W. King collected what was known about the Gnostics
in this book.
At that time there were only three sources of information on Gnosticism:
polemics against them
by early Christian writers,
the Pistis Sophia,
and a jumble of confusing images and cryptic inscriptions
on Roman-era gems and amulets.

In spite of all of the missing jigsaw pieces, King managed
to assemble a picture of the Gnostics which is still cited today
as authoritative.
Rather than one monolithic group, the Gnostics had very diverse
beliefs.
Some thought that Jesus was a man, while others thought that he
was a God, and some believed that he became a God only after he
was baptized.
Some believed in a struggle between good and evil, others were non-dualistic.
Most had widely-varying intricate systems of
intermediaries between the ultimate
deity and humanity.
On the face of it, this looks polytheistic,
but instead was an attempt to solve the problem of how a perfect God could
create an imperfect world.
Many of these Aeons later became the demons and angels
of Medieval and Renaissance magic.

King seeks links to Gnostic symbols and beliefs far afield,
from India, to the Templars, Rosicrucians and Illuminati.
He discusses Mithra and Serapis worship, and gives many
examples of Roman and Greek magical spells and talismans.
He discusses the fudged birthdate of Jesus, Masons' marks, and Simon Magus.
The book is a fascinating tour of hidden knowledge.

Production Notes:
This text uses Unicode extensively, so you should
consult the sacred-texts Unicode help page
if the Greek and Hebrew text in this text
is not displayed correctly in your browser.
There are many quotations of Greek and Latin text from inscriptions.
In some cases I have silently replaced rare forms of some greek letters
(particularly uppercase omega) with the more common ones.
In the final part of the book, there were no sub-sections.
To break up this long part of the book into files, I have inserted
logical sub-section headings.
As usual, these are in green type.